HE SAID IT WILL ONLY BE A THREE-YEAR AUTHORIZATION.
**Sources: NY Times; White House; Youtube
~ For Immediate Release February 11, 2015
~ Letter from the President -- Authorization for the Use of United States Armed Forces in connection with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant
~ TO THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES:
The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) poses a threat to the people and stability of Iraq, Syria, and the broader Middle East, and to U.S. national security.
It threatens American personnel and facilities located in the region and is responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens James Foley, Steven Sotloff, Abdul-Rahman Peter Kassig, and Kayla Mueller. If left unchecked, ISIL will pose a threat beyond the Middle East, including to the United States homeland.
I have directed a comprehensive and sustained strategy to degrade and defeat ISIL. As part of this strategy, U.S. military forces are conducting a systematic campaign of airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq and Syria.
Although existing statutes provide me with the authority I need to take these actions, I have repeatedly expressed my commitment to working with the Congress to pass a bipartisan authorization for the use of military force (AUMF) against ISIL.
Consistent with this commitment, I am submitting a draft AUMF that would authorize the continued use of military force to degrade and defeat ISIL.
My Administration's draft AUMF would not authorize long‑term, large-scale ground combat operations like those our Nation conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Local forces, rather than U.S. military forces, should be deployed to conduct such operations.
The authorization I propose would provide the flexibility to conduct ground combat operations in other, more limited circumstances, such as rescue operations involving U.S. or coalition personnel or the use of special operations forces to take military action against ISIL leadership.
It would also authorize the use of U.S. forces in situations where ground combat operations are not expected or intended, such as intelligence collection and sharing, missions to enable kinetic strikes, or the provision of operational planning and other forms of advice and assistance to partner forces.
Although my proposed AUMF does not address the 2001 AUMF, I remain committed to working with the Congress and the American people to refine, and ultimately repeal, the 2001 AUMF.
Enacting an AUMF that is specific to the threat posed by ISIL could serve as a model for how we can work together to tailor the authorities granted by the 2001 AUMF.
I can think of no better way for the Congress to join me in supporting our Nation's security than by enacting this legislation, which would show the world we are united in our resolve to counter the threat posed by ISIL.
Abu Yahya al-Libi, the No. 2 man in al Qaeda and a longtime public face of the terror network, has been killed by a CIA drone strike in Pakistan launched Monday, U.S. officials said Tuesday.
One of the officials said multiples sources confirmed al-Libi's killing to the United States, but the official declined to provide details.
Al-Libi's death marks one of the most significant blows to al Qaeda since the U.S. military killed Osama bin Laden in a daring nighttime raid in Pakistan a year ago. Al-Libi was second-in-command behind al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took the helm after bin Laden's death.
"There is no one who even comes close in terms of replacing the expertise (al Qaeda) has just lost," said the U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Al-Libi "played a critical role in the group's planning against the West, providing oversight of the external operations efforts," the official said.
"Zawahiri will be hard-pressed to find any one person who can readily step into Abu Yahya's shoes," the official said. "In addition to his gravitas as a longstanding member of AQ's leadership, Abu Yahya's religious credentials gave him the authority to issue fatwas, operational approvals and guidance to the core group in Pakistan and regional affiliates."
The Monday strike was the third such deadly attack in as many days and the 21st suspected U.S. drone strike in Pakistan this year. At least six missiles were fired at a militant compound near the town of Mir Ali in the North Waziristan region near the Afghanistan border.
Reports emerged a couple of years ago that al-Libi was slain, but they proved to be incorrect. Al Qaeda's leadership has been so thinned by the U.S. drone campaign in Pakistan that these men were the only two real leaders of the organization left, U.S.
counterterrorism officials said, according to CNN Security Analyst Peter Bergen. Al Qaeda offshoots in other parts of the world, such as the group's affiliate in Yemen, have meanwhile become more potent and worrisome to the United States.
An Islamic scholar and high-ranking member of the group, al-Libi frequently appeared in Internet videos. He gave many videotaped speeches praising al Qaeda leaders, urging resistance and trying to recruit new members.
"Al-Libi is a key motivator in the global jihadi movement and his messages convey a clear threat to U.S. persons or property worldwide," said a "Wanted" statement posted on the website of the U.S. State Department's "Rewards for Justice" program, which offers rewards for information about suspected terrorists.
"Al-Libi is believed to be in hiding in Afghanistan or Pakistan," said the website, which offered a reward of up to $1 million for the 49-year-old Libyan. Al-Libi purportedly was among al Qaeda leaders working in Libya since last year to establish a presence there.
In a video message to fellow Libyans distributed on jihadist forums in December, al-Libi said, "At this crossroads you have found yourselves: You either choose a secular regime that pleases the greedy crocodiles of the West and for them to use it as a means to fulfill their goals, or you take a strong position and establish the religion of Allah."
Al-Libi was captured in 2002 and imprisoned at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, according to the U.S. government, but he escaped in 2005.
In 2008, a statement posted on radical Islamic websites known to carry messages from al Qaeda described how four "military leaders" including al-Libi escaped from the prison, but the statement said then that one of the escapees, Abu Abdallah al-Shami, had been killed in a U.S. airstrike.
The statement said that among those escaping with al-Shami was key al Qaeda figure Omar al-Faruq, who died in a British airstrike after the escape.
Another escapee, Abu Nasir al-Qahtani, was captured in Afghanistan in 2006. Al-Shami's death left al-Libi as the only remaining member of that escape who had not been killed or captured.
President Barack Obama's administration recently justified its use of unmanned drones to target suspected terrorists overseas in a rare public statement, with John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, saying the strikes are conducted "in full accordance with the law."
The program uses unmanned aerial vehicles, often equipped with Hellfire missiles, to target suspected terrorists in remote locations overseas, with many such strikes occurring in Yemen and Pakistan, despite some internal opposition within the latter country.
Brennan said the United States "respects national sovereignty and international law" and is guided by the laws of war in ordering those attacks. The Pakistani border area is widely believed to be the operating base for the Haqqani network and other militant groups that have attacked international troops in neighboring Afghanistan.
Today Pres. Obama's Administration Released To The Public Video Footage Taken From The Late Al-Qaeda Leader Osama Bin Laden's Compound In Pakistan.
Some Of The Footage Appears To Reveal A Tired, Aged Man Who Enjoyed Watching Global News Stories About Himself & His Extremist Antics On Satellite Television.
Surely Such An Innocent Looking, Older Guy Wouldn't Harm A Flea Right?
WRONG!
As We All Know, Looks Can Be Deceiving.
Osama Bin Laden Was Still As Dangerous A Terrorist In Those Home Videos As He Was When He Ordered The Destruction Of U.S. Property & U.S. Citizens On 09-11-2001.
This Was NOT A Guy To Be Trusted Like You Would Your Loving Grandfather.
He Was A Cold-Blooded Killer Who Hated America!
He Also Hated Most Human Beings, Including Many Muslim Citizens.
And He Used Al-Qaeda As A Tool To Spread Fear & Blackmail Money From World Leaders.
Thank God For Both Pres. Obama & Former Pres. G.W. Bush Whose Administrations Led To His Demise.
Thank God For The Wealth Of Intelligence Navy Seal Team 6 Gathered Before Leaving His Home After Completing The Mission (Killing Him).
It Ain't Over Yet But Thank God We Can All Breathe A Little Easier.
Haunting and candid videos emerged of Osama bin Laden on Saturday, never-seen-before footage that provides clues into the psyche and stature of the world's most wanted terrorist.
Intelligence officials on Saturday unveiled five different videos of bin Laden that were confiscated from the raid by U.S. forces at his Pakistan compound, which left the al Qaeda leader and four others dead.
Officials say the new videos collected from the site in Abbottabad are a small slice of the haul considered to be the most significant amount of intelligence ever collected from a senior terrorist.
The video and other intelligence show that the slain al Qaeda leader was very much in control over the network's day-to-day operations, according to Pentagon officials briefing reporters.
The intelligence reveals that bin Laden and al Qaeda had a driving interest in taking on the United States and that the leader was involved in the details of plotting attacks.
The U.S. government edited and selected the snippets, and there is no audio to accompany the images. The lack of sound punctuates the chilling imagery and keeps bin Laden's words from being used as, officials say, militant propaganda.
One video looks like a home movie, a portrait of an old man watching television, but it is an image of a terrorist and suggests how conscious bin Laden was of his image.
Sporting a white-gray beard, bin Laden is seen sitting in front of a small television, flipping through a selection of satellite channels as he intently views video footage of himself.
A hunched Bin Laden is wearing a dark wool cap with a blanket draped around his shoulders, holding a clicker and slightly rocking in his seat in spartan surroundings.
One of the videos is a message to the United States officials believe was recorded in October or November. In that video, bin Laden's beard has been dyed black and he was well-composed as he delivered his message.
The three other videos are practice sessions for videos he was planning to release to the world.
The videos were shown amid the Obama adminstration's decision not to release photos of the slain bin Laden and bury the terrorist leader at sea.
A senior intelligence official briefing reporters at the Pentagon said last week's raid by U.S. forces yielded a significant amount of intelligence, and that a special federal taskforce -- including members of the CIA and FBI -- is combing through the material.
The official also said the DNA evidence unquestionably shows that the person shot and killed in the Pakistan compound was bin Laden.
The intelligence officials said they are trying to determine what bin Laden's death means to the future of al Qaeda and are combing through intelligence to get clues on where other top al Qaeda leaders are.
The No. 2 man in al Qaeda is Ayman al-Zawahiri; another top militant is Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S. born militant who is a leader in the group's Yemen branch.
This week, al-Awlaki eluded a drone attack in southern Yemen as security personnel continue their hunt for him.
Al Qaeda released a statement on militant Web sites Friday confirming the death of Osama bin Laden, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadi Web sites. The lengthy statement, dated May 3 and signed by Al Qaeda’s General Command, warned of new attacks and called on the Pakistani people to rebel against their government to protest its relations with the United States.
Bin Laden was killed in a United States raid early Monday morning in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
According to a translation provided by SITE, which ran more than three pages, the statement said that Al Qaeda would not die with its founder and that its members would “continue on the path of jihad.” Bin Laden’s blood, they added, would not be “wasted in vain.”
“It will remain, with permission from God the Almighty, a curse that chases the Americans and their agents, and goes after them inside and outside their countries,” the letter said. “Soon — with help from God — their happiness will turn into sorrow, and their blood will be mixed with their tears.”
The authors of the statement said that the people of Pakistan should revolt against their leaders to “cleanse this shame that has been attached to them” by the American raid.
The statement demanded that Bin Laden’s remains be given to his family, not disposed of in an “improper way”; his body was buried at sea on Monday by United States forces.
The statement also said the bodies of any relatives who had been killed should be handed over to the family and warned that “any offense will open unto you doors of multitudes of evil for which you will only have yourselves to blame.” One of Bin Laden’s sons was killed in the raid, according to American officials.
The statement announced that Bin Laden made an audio recording one week before his death, which Al Qaeda leaders said they plan to release soon.
Yes! It Was W. Bush Who Spent More Than $1 Trillion Dollars, While Risking The Lives Of Thousands Of U.S. Troops On This ONE Man!
A Man Whose ONLY Plan Was To Bring Our Nation To Its Knees Financially In The Form Of W. Bush's "War On Terror"!!
Pres. W. Bush's Administration Claimed It Couldn't Find Osama Even Though He Spent The Last 6 1/2 Years Of His Life Residing In A $1 Million Palatial Mansion , Less Than 1000 Yards Away From The Pakistani Capital.
Sounds Strange To Me But Than Again What Do I Know?
I'm Just A Regular U.S. Citizen.
I'm NOT The CIA, FBI, U.S. Dept Of Defense Secretary Or U.S. Secretary Of State!
So What Do I Know???
What I Do Know Is That It Took Pres. Obama's Administration 2 Years To Locate And Kill Osama & 8 Years For W. Bush's Administration To NEVER Find Him At All!!
Was The Purpose Of Choosing NOT To Capture Or Harm Osama Bin Laden For The U.S. To Have Continued Access To Saudi Arabia's Oil Or For Personal Capital Gain?
Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t. So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that “bin Laden has been enormously successful”? There’s no caliphate. There’s no sweeping sharia law. Didn’t we win this one in a clean knockout?
Apparently not. Bin Laden, according to Gartenstein-Ross, had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After all, he’d done the bankrupt-a-superpower thing before. And though it didn’t quite work out this time, it worked a lot better than most of us, in this exultant moment, are willing to admit.
Bin Laden’s transition from scion of a wealthy family to terrorist mastermind came in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was trying to conquer Afghanistan. Bin Laden was part of the resistance, and the resistance was successful — not only in repelling the Soviet invasion, but in contributing to the communist super-state’s collapse a few years later. “We, alongside the mujaheddin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt,” he later explained.
The campaign taught bin Laden a lot. For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s plan for the United States, too.
“He has compared the United States to the Soviet Union on numerous occasions — and these comparisons have been explicitly economic,” Gartenstein-Ross argues in a Foreign Policy article. “For example, in October 2004 bin Laden said that just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujaheddin had destroyed Russia economically, al Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States, ‘continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’ ”
For bin Laden, in other words, success was not to be measured in body counts. It was to be measured in deficits, in borrowing costs, in investments we weren’t able to make in our country’s continued economic strength. And by those measures, bin Laden landed a lot of blows.
Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the price tag on the Iraq War alone will surpass $3 trillion. Afghanistan likely amounts to another trillion or two. Add in the build-up in homeland security spending since 9/11 and you’re looking at yet another trillion. And don’t forget the indirect costs of all this turmoil: The Federal Reserve, worried about a fear-induced recession, slashed interest rates after the attack on the World Trade Center, and then kept them low to combat skyrocketing oil prices, a byproduct of the war in Iraq. That decade of loose monetary policy may well have contributed to the credit bubble that crashed the economy in 2007 and 2008.
Then there’s the post-9/11 slowdown in the economy, the time wasted in airports, the foregone returns on investments we didn’t make, the rise in oil prices as a result of the Iraq War, the cost of rebuilding Ground Zero, health care for the first responders and much, much more.
But it isn’t quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn’t — couldn’t — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.
It’s a smart play against a superpower. We didn’t need to respond to 9/11 by trying to reshape the entire Middle East, but we’re a superpower, and we think on that scale. We didn’t need to respond to failed attempts to smuggle bombs onto airplanes through shoes and shampoo bottles by screening all footwear and banning large shampoo bottles, but we’re a superpower, and our tolerance for risk is extremely low. His greatest achievement was getting our psychology at least somewhat right.
In the end, of course, bin Laden was just another bag of meat and bones, hiding in a walled compound in Pakistan, so deeply afraid of death that he tried to use his wife as a shield when the special forces came for him. But he understood the mind of the superpower well enough to use our capabilities against us. He may not have won, but he did succeed, at least partially.
But then, we can learn from our mistakes. He can’t.
The attempted Assassination of the British Ambassador to Yemen in April, together with a purported video of the Christmas Day bomber training with Al Qaeda’s branch here, has drawn fresh attention to the need for a strong Counter Terrorism strategy in Yemen.
The United States sharply increased military assistance to Yemen after AQAP claimed responsibility for the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a Detroit-bound flight. In recent months, the Yemeni government has targeted dozens of suspected AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula] operatives – often quietly working in tandem with the US.
But experts caution that unless Yemen diversifies its approach – which led to success in neighboring Saudi Arabia – increased military action as well as overt cooperation with America may ultimately backfire.
“Up until Christmas Day 2009, AQAP ... was stronger in Yemen than it had ever been before. Over the last few months, they’ve taken a series of hits … but none of these have been sort of the debilitating blow that’s going to knock the organization off its tracks for any sustained period of time,” says Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University in New Jersey.
A Day In The Life Of Yemen's Counter Terrorism Unit
The main crux of Yemen’s Counter Terrorism offensive is targeted military action by the Yemeni Counter Terrorism Unit (CTU), with the aid of American and British funding, trainers, and intelligence. In February, Defense Secretary Robert Gates authorized $150 million in security assistance for Yemen for fiscal year 2010, up from $67 million last year.
According to officials interviewed by Reuters, $38 million of the funding is earmarked for a military transport aircraft, while $34 million will go to "tactical assistance" of Yemen's special operations forces.
The CTU was established in 2003 and consists of 200 fighters who live in barracks at the headquarters of Central Command in Sanaa. They attend training sessions five days a week at a small, primitive obstacle course about eight miles outside the capital.
On a recent day, a small team of soldiers in green camouflage ran drills.
The soldiers ran to a fixed point before lying down and firing at an upper body target. Darting up in unison, they ran to another target point and fired at green glass bottles balanced on a wall, until moving on to firing pistols at a closer range on more targets that appeared to be cut from wood and cardboard. An empty concrete structure approximating a house stands amid the course, where the CTU practices approaching homes.
The CTU also has an all-woman unit consisting of 42 women, who work with female American instructors, who also practice shooting on the course. Overhead, the sound of Air Force practice could be heard.
Maj. Abu Luhom, who has been with the CTU since it was founded, says they have been running more, increasingly successful, missions in recent months: “We owe the credit to American and British training.”
Amar, a young warrant officer, gleamed with sweat under his black helmet and flak jacket after finishing the obstacle course. “Every day we sit with the Americans,” he said, adding that they coach him in house searching, shooting, and medical training. He explained that he trains five days a week and sometimes has night drills – before the interview was abruptly ended by Luhom's directive that soldiers were not authorized to speak to the press.
Almost every news story about Yemen ends with a familiar listing of the various challenges, or “crises,” facing the country. Of those who follow such news regularly, many simply stop reading when the usual litany is presented: civil war, terrorism, secessionism, water crisis, an exploding population, etc. Recent events, from Saudi Arabia’s entanglement in the Houthi rebellion in November of last year, to the failed bombing attempt on an American airliner by a Nigerian trained in Yemen, have served to sharpen international attention on Yemen’s internal issues.
A report from an American think tank summarized the worst fears of many, stating that these interconnected problems “have the potential to overwhelm the Yemeni government, jeopardizing domestic stability and security across the region.” At the center of these discussions is the viability of the Yemeni government in the midst of a sea of crises.
Attempting to bring light into this void is a team of young reformers, who have developed an ambitious ten-point plan of reform. It has been in the works since 2008, but in the last six months, the Ten Point Plan has gained considerable momentum, and now enjoys support from the highest levels of government.
The group behind the plan, including Deputy Minister of Finance Jalal Yaqoub, among many others, have been part of past reform efforts, and are uniquely positioned to answer difficult questions: What reforms are possible? What reforms should we prioritize? What steps need to be taken to achieve them? What are the likely obstacles?
The plan starts with the belief that the core of Yemen’s problems are economic in nature, and dealing with the economy requires focusing on three areas: job opportunities, provision of services, and rule of law. All of the ten points are related to one of these three pillars.
Evolution Of A Plan
The plan began with frank discussions among a group of young reformers in 2008. In June of that year, Jalal Yaqoub penned an article for Yemen Today, presenting the Ten Points (or Ten Priorities, as they have also been referred to) in an abbreviated form. But it did not take off until the summer of 2009.
The plan was revised and presented to Prime Minister Mujawwar in a PowerPoint presentation in July; a month later President Saleh gave his official imprimatur, and the wheels of government started moving to make the plan a reality. An executive office was formed, comprising the relevant ministers. Beneath the executive office is a technical committee, of which Jalal is a member, tasked with working out the fine print. International consultants have been hired to assist with this step, after which the plan will be officially announced.
This is expected to happen in the spring. In the meantime, the Ten Points have been referred to favorably by Barack Obama (in a letter to President Saleh in the fall), and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband at the London Conference back in January. Yemen Today sat down with Jalal to discuss the plan in greater detail.
The Priorities
“Why do we need priorities?” Jalal asks rhetorically, right off the bat. “Yemen faces many challenges; you name it, we have it right now. And we design strategies and plans to deal with these issues; however, we really don’t have enough time, financial resources, or human capacity to address all the challenges at the same time…Therefore, we’re saying that the government must prioritize, and must create success stories for the citizens to see, in the next twenty-four months.”
After looking at the broad range of issues the ten points aim to tackle, from government employment to water, from oil to land, the two-year timeline for the Ten Points seemed quite short. But Jalal made it clear that the idea of a relatively short time frame was to establish, and achieve, clear goals and benchmarks. “We need to create success stories,” he said, and to re-establish the government’s credibility by making visible progress.
The fifth priority, for example, is land reform. Clashes over land are responsible for violence and clogging the courts with intractable case-loads. To solve all the country’s land disputes within two years is not realistic. What the plan hopes to accomplish, however, is to take a few neighborhoods, and register all of the land in those areas, settling disputes once and for all. Such a success story, achievable in two years, would set an example for the rest of the country to follow.
While an issue like land reform enjoys broad consensus, that is not the case for all of the points. The most controversial of the points is a plan to attract one hundred highly qualified Yemenis into the government. Most of them would likely be Yemenis born and/or educated abroad. Jalal doesn’t pull any punches; he believes the low capacity of government employees is one of the greatest challenges facing the government. Senior level officials, whose jobs may be in jeopardy, are not pleased at the prospect of losing their jobs.
Nevertheless, Jalal is insistent: “If there is one priority that is the most important, the one that would make the most change, it would be this one. Because we believe that the core of most of our problems stems from not being able to deliver the services needed to be a success. And why are we not able to deliver these services? Because we cannot plan properly, because we don’t have the right people.”
Many of the points are interconnected, as Jalal readily acknowledges. Priority nine, for example, calls for urgent solutions to the water crisis. Laws to deal with the crisis are in place, it’s just a matter of enforcing those laws; enforcing the rule of law is itself a point (number eight).
The government’s inability to uniformly enforce the law also feeds the aforementioned land issues, which themselves negatively impact the investment environment, the improvement of which is a key to the first and seventh points (Top 100, and Action Plan for Aden, respectively), and so it goes.
One notable absence from the list is corruption, an issue which many Yemenis feel to be at the heart of the country’s problems. “I see dealing with corruption just like you do with terrorism,” Jalal responded. “You have to deal with it in two parallel approaches. One, with extremism, you have to have security measures…But you also have to have development on the ground, with job opportunities and services, like water, electricity, roads, education, and health…This parallels with corruption. You can always just keep putting people in jail, but this doesn’t deal with the root of the problem.
You have to fix the system. I see corruption as a symptom, and [the ten points] are the ingredients that you use to fix the underlying problem.” Education and health care are also not in the plan for the same reason: they are just symptoms of more fundamental problems, which the Ten Point Plan hopes to tackle directly.
While the plan is meant to demonstrate that Yemen can help itself, Jalal doesn’t deny that concerted assistance from the international community will be needed to help the country fend off multiple crises. And the donors themselves are hoping that the government will not only step up to the plate, but will hit a home run as well. The Ten Points could not be more relevant in this regard, given increasing reports (all unofficial so far) that Yemen might enter into an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Such agreements usually call for a government to reduce subsidies by raising prices, while also making cuts to the civil service. The end goal is improving the government’s fiscal health by cutting expenditures, but higher prices and unemployment would be the likely results. The Ten Points, particularly the first three, deal with the same issues, but in a more deliberate, holistic fashion. Rather than immediate cuts to subsidies and the civil service across the board, the plan calls for a measured process, through which greater employment opportunities and improved services would first be provided, softening the blow to the population of eventual price raises and cuts to the civil service.
Government Credibility
A final criticism of the plan is that it fails to deal with what many observers feel to be the central problem of the Yemeni government: over-centralization of authority. Yet those behind the plan are not revolutionaries; they are clearly trying to effect change from within the system. Point six calls for the engagement of the President’s Office (and by extension, his ruling party, the General People’s Congress). The goal of the Ten Points is to re-establish the government’s credibility with Yemeni citizens and the international community, investors and donors alike.
Although the government is criticized from many quarters for corruption, lack of transparency, and a less-than perfect human rights record, there are no realistic policy recommendations which suggest circumventing the central government. Whatever its faults, there is no other institution in Yemen with the potential to bring about the sweeping change necessary.
Public discontent with the government grows as the government’s credibility and ability to provide services decrease. By all accounts, such discontent is feeding the Southern Movement and tacit tribal support for al-Qaeda. The Ten Point Plan is the government’s best chance in a long time to regain the public’s trust. A dedicated team of public servants is working to give the people reason to hope.
But working closely with the US is a difficult balancing act for the Yemeni government, and risks strengthening AQAP’s hand.
“Al Qaeda wants to present Yemen on par with Iraq and Afghanistan ... to present Yemen as being occupied by outside forces, because once they do that, then it throws open the gates of recruitment,” says Mr. Johnsen of Princeton. He describes statements by Yemeni officials that there are no US soldiers in Yemen as “a very sort of calculated quote to indicate to the Yemenis that these aren’t soldiers, they are just advisers – and that the US isn’t occupying Yemen.”
Yemen’s predicament was highlighted when the CIA added to its hit list American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, a Muslim cleric tied to the Fort Hood shooter and Christmas Day bomber who is now believed to be hiding in Yemen. Initially, Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Qirbi said Yemen was waiting for US evidence of Mr. Awlaki’s terrorism ties before hunting him, but later amended his statement.
“Yemeni authorities look at him [Al-Awlaki] as having links with Al Qaeda and therefore he is targeted by the Yemeni government for arrest and prosecution,” Mr. Qirbi told the Monitor in a follow-up interview in his office. He maintained responsibility for capturing Awlaki was a domestic prerogative. “Outside interference, of course, will create political problems for the government.” Saudi success has driven militants to Yemen
One country that has struck a balance between public cooperation with the US and countering Al Qaeda is Saudi Arabia, which launched a successful domestic offensive against the group in 2003. Saudi forces are better funded and have been receiving foreign training since the early 1970s, but experts maintain Saudi Arabia’s ability to dispel Al Qaeda stemmed from launching a variety of initiatives, something Yemen hasn’t done.
“The whole point is they’ve done many things and [it’s] precisely the diversity that partly explains the success. They’ve not relied exclusively on force,” says Thomas Hegghammer, research fellow at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) in Oslo. Saudis used propaganda campaigns, constrained the financial resources of militants, limited their ability to acquire weapons, and offered militants amnesty to encourage desertion from Al Qaeda.
“In Saudi Arabia, the violence subsided to the level of zero, one, or two [operations] per year after 2006 and the organization didn’t produce any more propaganda," adds Mr. Hegghammer.
The irony of the success of the Saudi program is that Saudi militants have moved to Yemen. In January 2009, six years after the Saudis bolstered their counterterrorism offensive, the Saudi and Yemeni branches of Al Qaeda joined forces under the new name Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and made Yemen their base.
“As the security environment in Saudi Arabia has gotten less permissive, these guys will relocate,” says Christopher Boucek, associate at the Carnegie Middle East program in Washington.
Measuring success in either country comes down to “what the militants say and what the militants do,” says Hegghammer. “In Yemen ... Al Qaeda is still carrying out operations at the rate of tens [of] attacks per year and is very active in producing propaganda, so [Yemen has] a long way to go.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) Sunday joined the GOP chorus calling for the removal of John Brennan, a special assistant to the president for counterterrorism.
“He has lost my confidence,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday,” criticizing Brennan both for his role in giving Miranda rights to the accused Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, as well as his recent comments suggesting that the 20 percent rate of terrorists returning to the battle field is not that bad.
Asked if he thought Brennan should resign, Graham replied: “I think it would be better to have a new person in that job.”
A 23-year-old Nigerian man claiming ties to Al-Qaida tried to light a powder aboard a commercial jetliner before it landed Friday in Detroit, a senior U.S. counter terrorism official told NBC News. A U.S. Counter Terrorism official characterized the powder as an explosive device, and federal officials raised the terrorism alert for air flights to orange, or high, the second-highest level.
“He appears to have had some kind of incendiary device he tried to ignite,” a senior U.S. official said.
Two people noticed the attempted attack, and a third person jumped on the man and subdued him, an airline official told NBC News. The man was being treated at the burn unit of the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor, officials said.
The man told investigators that he wanted to set off a bomb over the United States and claimed to be connected to Al-Qaida, the terrorism network responsible for the attacks that killed more than 3,000 people in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, counter terrorism officials said.
A counter terrorism official said the man, who was subdued by the crew of Northwest Air Lines Flight 253 from Amsterdam, left Lagos, Nigeria, on Thursday and boarded the Northwest flight in Amsterdam on Friday.
Rep. Peter King of New York, the senior Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said he had been briefed on the incident and said it “must be looked into” how the man was able to sneak a “somewhat sophisticated device” on board.
King said the suspect was in federal counter terrorism files and may have been on the government’s list of suspicious passengers banned from flying in the United States.
“All major issues need to be investigated,” King told NBC News, warning that the incident “could have been a Christmas catastrophe.”
The timing of the attempted attack could be significant.
It was eight years ago this week that a similar attempted attack was launched by a British member of Al-Qaida who tried to blow up a flight from Paris to Miami by igniting explosives in his shoes.
Officials said Flight 253, an Airbus 330, was carrying 278 passengers. The Transportation Security Administration reported that the plane had been taken to a remote area of Detroit Metropolitan Airport and that all passengers had left the plane and were being re-screened, along with all the luggage on the flight. In addition, all passengers were interviewed, a TSA statement said.
Syed Jafri, a U.S. citizen who was on the plane flying from the United Arab Emirates, said he was seated three rows behind the passenger and saw a glow and noticed the smell of smoke. Then, he said, “a young man behind me jumped on him.”
“Next thing you know, there was a lot of panic,” Jafri said.
Rich Griffith, a passenger from Pontiac, Mich., said he was seated too far in the back to see what had happened. But he said he didn’t mind being detained on the plane for several hours.
“It’s frustrating if you don’t want to keep your country safe,” he said. “We can’t have what’s going on everywhere else happening here.”
President Barack Obama, who is on vacation in Hawaii, was informed of the incident Friday morning by his National Security Council staff, said Bill Burton, a spokesman for the White House.
An interagency meeting of senior intelligence, law enforcement and security was convened out of Washington to discuss the incident and possible measures to ensure that there no similar attacks, Burton said.
U.S. counter terrorism officials are particularly concerned in light of the 2006 London airline plot, in which British and Pakistani nationals conspired to carry out multiple suicide bombings on board trans-Atlantic flights.
Accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cousin Ramzi Yousef were accused of plotting in 1995 to take down multiple airliners over the Pacific Ocean using explosive devices hidden in airliner lavatories.
The response to the attempted attack created an unusual tableau for people around the airport.
“I don’t ever recall seeing a plane on that runway ever before, and I pass by there frequently,” said J.P. Karas, 55, of Wyandotte, Mich., who was driving down a road near the airport when he spotted the jet, surrounded by police cars, an ambulance, a bus and some TV trucks.
Karas said that it was difficult to tell what was going on but that it looked as though the plane’s front wheel was off the runway.
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